Sina 'information credit score' restricts Weibo users

Sina's Twitter-like microblog service Weibo has released new
guidelines to restrict users who share banned content, according to
international news reports. It's the first time such guidelines target users
who adopt puns, homonyms, and other veiled
references to discuss censored news stories without using keywords on the
propaganda department's blacklist, the reports said.

Weibo's operator is getting squeezed.
With government censorship restrictions on one side and a select group of users
determined to flout them on the other, it has struggled to regulate content
with a series of measures, from real-name registration
to canceling
user accounts. These measures were patchily enforced and arguably failed, as
Weibo users still use their accounts to break news and discuss banned content.

Sina introduced user contracts on Monday which establish a
kind of information credit score, according to international news reports. Each
account begins with 80 points, which increase with "unspecified promotional
activities" but will be reduced for spreading rumors, impugning China, or
calling for protests, according to The
New York Times. Users will be warned when their score drops below 60,
and see their accounts canceled if they hit zero, the Times said.

The new system appears complex and carefully calibrated, but
it's actually arbitrary. It is not clear who will assess alleged violations and
how many points they will remove. The violations are outlined in broad terms
that cover reporting on censored news stories and expressing anti-government
opinions--hence the opportunity to apply them to even the most creative
allusions to banned content (and the possibility that some users will be
punished for innocuous use of suspected code words).

Chinese journalists and dissidents are already routinely
punished for these offenses, not with points, but with severe and invasive
surveillance of the kind that blind legal activist Chen
Guangcheng escaped in late April. Capital Week financial
magazine journalist Li Delin disappeared and was believed detained in March,
after he reported seeing tanks in Beijing on his microblog in the wake of the
Bo Xilai corruption scandal, according to CPJ
research. His status is still unclear. The majority of the 27 journalists
CPJ documented in prison in
China last year were imprisoned on anti-state charges for writing online. Some
face a decade or more in jail, one a life term. They're not concerned about
their status on Weibo.

The guidelines, if fully implemented, could have a chilling
effect on regular users, but they will not impede writers and activists in the
vanguard of the fight for free expression. Unfortunately, they will not replace
the Chinese Communist Party's use of criminal prosecutions--or extralegal
punishment--to silence those writers and activists, either.

Madeline Earp is senior researcher for CPJ’s Asia Program. She has studied Mandarin in China and Taiwan, and graduated with a master’s in East Asian studies from Harvard. Follow her on Twitter @cpjasia and Facebook @ CPJ Asia Desk.